


No Resemblance

by Elisif



Series: The Thangorodrim Series [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1533782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisif/pseuds/Elisif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nolofinwë struggles to recognise his nephew after his rescue from Angband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The chamber was quiet. Though Nolofinwë sincerely doubted that his nephew was sleeping so much as unconscious from shock, blood loss and fever, after the long night of agonising treatment he had endured and that Nolofinwë had distantly presided watch over, the absence of tormented screaming echoed like the calm after a summer rainstorm.

Nolofinwë sat down at his bedside, looked down at him with baited breath, and then tried his hardest to convince himself that this was, in fact, his nephew.

He couldn’t do it. Try as he might, his mind simply would not, _could_ not form even the most tenuous connection between the image in his mind of his half-brother’s proud, beautiful firstborn and that of this mangled, wraith-like skeleton now lying crumpled in his son’s bed. Before, there had at least been his red hair to faintly recognise him by, but now that the healers had shaved that off...

His height, it occurred to him; that was still there. Enough of a firestorm had been provoked after all over procuring a nightshirt for their “guest” when the only person into whose clothes he would fit had been Turúkáno... One small thing, at least.

And Arda, that constituted an _improvement_. He hadn’t recognised the thing clutched in his son’s arms as a _person_ for the first few seconds, let alone his nephew, until it had started screaming and the unthinkable realisation had hit him. Judging by the hushed, appalled silence that had overtaken the crowd as those carrying lanterns came close enough to illuminate the scene, it had hit everyone else at the same moment.

“Give him to me,” he had said, quietly, reaching upwards, close enough to hear the murmurings of his son:

“ _Shhh, listen I’m going to give you to my father. You remember your uncle Nolofinwë, don’t you? I’m not leaving— I’ll be right behind you, do you understand?— but I can’t get down unless I let go...”_

Naked, utterly emaciated, seemingly every bone in his body twisted and broken, filthy, _drenched_ in blood, his wrist open and butchered, some form of injury marking every inch of his skin... Nolofinwë had taken him into his arms and carried him back towards the encampment, choking back both genuine repulsion at the sight of him and the memory of once in the same fashion carrying him home as a small child screaming bloody murder over scraped knees and elbows.

He reached over, wrapped his hand gently around the five skeletal fingers emerging from beneath the coverlet, then hearing a pained gasp took a rag from the nightstand in his other hand and softly daubed some of the feverish sweat from its- _Maitimo’s,_ this person is _Maitimo_ \- ‘s forehead.

“ _Shh, shhh..._ ”

This _thing_ was what had become of a small child he remembered. Someone he knew's _child_ had been taken, and turned into _this_.

There was a soft creak, and then he overheard the door of the sick-room being pushed open.

One of his guardsmen, he noted, looking upwards; not a man with any close connection with the royal family. The simple gesture of opening the door had transformed the scene from a deeply private to a public one and through long years of practice, Nolofinwë responded accordingly. He turned over his nephew’s hand, feigned checking the faint pulse in his wrist and throat and set the hand down, all while donning a mask of political apathy. Not a father grieving in another’s place; a King calmly calculating the odds of his political rival outliving the night, that was all.

“You called for a guard to stand watch my lord...”

He nodded, stood up, reached for his cloak from where he had hung it across the back of his chair, face blank as he did so.

As he departed, he glanced back and allowed the phrase:

“Fëanáro is fortunate to be dead,” to escape his lips.


	2. Chapter 2

Some days later, Nolofinwë again managed to talk his firstborn into getting some rest and took over his tireless vigil.

The unlit sick-room was stifling, silent save for a few muffled voices from beyond the white-washed walls. The air was heavy with the rusted, salt-tinged cloy of blood emanating from the body in the bed— the pointed bundle of bones, angled and jutted beneath the furred coverlets as no human should ever have been— and at the horror of that sight and the laboured stillness, Nolofinwë closed his own eyes, rested his hands beneath his thighs on the frayed caning of the chair.

He knew not how long he dozed in his seat, but his sleep was light enough that he awoke the slightest wool-wadded crunch of movement against pillow awoke him when Maitimo’s black-bruised, unbandaged eye flickered open the merest crack, and met Nolofinwë’s at his bedside.

Focussed gaze, as much as it could be called that, held for perhaps a few seconds. With a gasp of pain, Maitimo attempted to draw his emaciated left arm free of the blankets; the unexpectedly violent jerk knocked them askew and they slipped from around his shoulders down to his exposed chest, and he whimpered at the change in sensation.

Nolofinwë’s fingers shook and he bit down hard on his lower lip as he did his best to appear unintimidating. Slowly, he leant over his nephew to readjust the slipped blankets back up around his nephew’s neck. But before he could urge him back to sleep, he was interrupted.

“A— _Atar_?” Maitimo groaned, his head tilting back in a wince of agony and his black eye gazing uncertainly up at Nolofinwë.

Silence.

Nolofinwë’s breath caught in his throat, his fingers frozen in place. It seemed so obvious now, though the thought had never occurred to him; _of course_ he and Fëanáro had looked alike, and to one so desperately ill as Maitimo...

 “No,” he said firmly, tucking the blankets back in around Maitimo’s shoulders with pinched fingertips, before lifting a lantern from beside the bed, holding it’s pressed tin body aloft illuminating the sickbed with soft, yellow, light. “I am you uncle, N—“

Another groan, edged in agony.

His lips pressed, Nolofinwe reached over. His own eyes half-closed, he ran his hand down Maitimo’s bare head and neck , stroked the feverish skin of his forehead with the back of his hand, felt the transition from soft, bare skin to puckered scar tissue at Maitimo’s jawline under his callused fingertips and knuckles.

“Hush— my son,” he whispered, his fingers trembling, “ _Hush Nelyo_.”

His skin burned below Nolofinwe's fingertips.

"None will assail you while I am here, Nelyo."

What endearments had Fëanáro used for his sons when they were young? Did he even remember? He casted his mind back, to those early, happy years, the scattered few occasions when Fëanáro had brought his sons back to the palace in Tirion as young children, bounced them in his arms and chased them squealing around the yellow pillars. That was where they had been the time that Maitimo had scraped and ripped his knees and elbows tripping over a fence in his mother’s rose garden, when Nolofinwë had carried him back to the house sobbing inconsolably in his arms. He remembered clearly Fëanáro’s fussing, the way he had coddled his son, kissing the cuts on his knees, rocking him back and forth while singing a lullaby...

Nolofinwë cleared his throat and softly, he began to echo the same tune, the words Fëanáro had once written for his firstborn son lingering on in stillness in the flickering, yellow lamplight, plaintive and haunting, as they had never been in Valinor.

Maitimo’s eyes closed and swiftly, he drifted back to the peace of sleep.


End file.
